Stories of ghost hauntings popularized by the Warrens have been adapted as or have indirectly inspired dozens of films, television series, and documentaries, including several films in the Amityville Horror series and the films in The Conjuring Universe. Over the years, several films and series have been released that are based in part or in full on the paranormal investigations or events that the Warrens are said to have witnessed and described. I absolutely love spooky movies and The Nun and Annabelle: Creation are 2 of my favorite white noise movies to play while I am cleaning the house. This does not sit too well with my husband who is terrified of these kinds of movies (why did he marry a witch then?!) but the influences from the Warrens’ original stories and the way the movies were portrayed was fantastic and I very much enjoyed them. Do I believe that these movies is exactly how it went down for the Warrens? Absolutely not. Hollywood tends to embellish some things. The more I researched though, the more it seemed that others do not believe the Warrens’ accounts either and find it to be merely a great story to tell for entertainment purposes.
The Perron Family Haunting
Their work also inspired horror movies like “The Conjuring” (2013). They investigated paranormal activity within the Perron family house in Rhode Island. The Warrens came in to conduct a séance to get rid of the spirits.
Amityville House
Another of the most famous cases investigated by Ed and Lorraine Warren was the Amityville House haunting. The owners of the house, the Lutz family, left the house after only 28 days and called in the Warrens. Ed and Lorraine explained that this house was one of the most terrifying places they had ever visited. They later learned about the very dark history of the land and concluded that demonic forces felt an attraction to the place. The photographs of their experience are in the Warren Occult Museum. (This story also became a popular film in 1979 called “The Amityville Horror.”)
The Warrens are best known for their involvement in the 1975 Amityville Horror in which New York couple George and Kathy Lutz claimed that their house was haunted by a violent, demonic presence so intense that it eventually drove them out of their home. The Amityville Horror Conspiracy authors Stephen and Roxanne Kaplan characterized the case as a “hoax”. Lorraine Warren told a reporter for The Express-Times newspaper that the Amityville Horror was not a hoax. The reported haunting was the basis for the 1977 book The Amityville Horror and adapted into the 1979 and 2005 films of the same name, while also serving as inspiration for the film series that followed. The Warrens’ version of events is partially adapted and portrayed in the opening sequence of The Conjuring 2 (2016). According to Benjamin Radford, the story was “refuted by eyewitnesses, investigations, and forensic evidence”. In 1979, lawyer William Weber stated that he, Jay Anson, and the occupants “invented” the horror story “over many bottles of wine”.
Annabelle
Annabelle, the Raggedy Ann doll, inspired the trilogy “Annabelle” (2014), “Annabelle: Creation” (2017), and “Annabelle Comes Home” (2019). The Amityville haunted house investigation inspired the horror film “The Amityville Horror” (1979). Finally, “The Conjuring” (2013) was based on the real-life house haunting experienced by the Perron family in Rhode Island. Additional films have since come out in the “Conjuring” series.
Enfield poltergeist
In 1977, the Warrens investigated claims that a family in the North London suburb of Enfield was haunted by poltergeist activity. While a number of independent observers dismissed the incident as a hoax carried out by “attention-hungry” children, the Warrens were convinced that it was a case of “demonic possession”. The story was the inspiration for The Conjuring 2, although critics say the Warrens were involved “to a far lesser degree than portrayed in the movie” and in fact had shown up to the scene uninvited and been refused admittance to the home.
Guy Lyon Playfair, a parapsychologist who investigated the Enfield case alongside Maurice Grosse, also says the film greatly exaggerated the Warrens’ role in the investigation. He stated in 2016 that they “turned up once” and that Ed Warren told Playfair “[the Warrens] could make a lot of money […] out of [the case].” He corroborated the claim that the Warrens were “not invited” to the Enfield house and that “Nobody […] in the family had ever heard of him until [Ed Warren] turned up”.
Trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson
In 1981, Arne Cheyenne Johnson was accused of killing his landlord, Alan Bono. Ed and Lorraine Warren had been called prior to the killing to deal with the alleged demonic possession of the younger brother of Johnson’s fiancée. The Warrens subsequently claimed that Johnson was also possessed. At trial, Johnson attempted to plead Not Guilty by Reason of Demonic Possession, but was unsuccessful with his plea. This story serves as the inspiration for The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021). The case was described in the 1983 book The Devil in Connecticut by Gerald Brittle.
Snedeker house
In 1986, Ed and Lorraine Warren arrived and proclaimed the Snedeker house, a former funeral home, to be infested with demons. The case was featured in the 1993 book In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting. A TV film that later became part of the Discovery Channel series A Haunting was produced in 2002. The Haunting in Connecticut, a film very loosely based on the Warrens’ version of events and directed by Peter Cornwell, was released in 2009. Horror author Ray Garton, who wrote an account of the alleged haunting of the Snedeker family in Southington, Connecticut, later called into question the veracity of the accounts contained in his book, saying, “The family involved, which was going through some serious problems like alcoholism and drug addiction, could not keep their story straight, and I became very frustrated; it’s hard writing a non-fiction book when all the people involved are telling you different stories”. To paranormal investigator Benjamin Radford, Garton said of Lorraine, “‘If she told me the sun would come up tomorrow morning, I’d get a second opinion'”.
Smurl family
Pennsylvania residents Jack and Janet Smurl reported their home was disturbed by numerous supernatural phenomena, including sounds, smells and apparitions. The Warrens became involved and claimed that the Smurl home was occupied by four spirits and also a demon that allegedly sexually assaulted Jack and Janet. The Smurls’ version of their story was the subject of a 1986 paperback titled The Haunted and television film of the same name directed by Robert Mandel.
Union Cemetery (Easton, Connecticut)
Ed Warren’s book Graveyard: True Hauntings from an Old New England Cemetery (St Martins Press, 1992) features a “White Lady” ghost which haunts Union Cemetery. He claimed to have “captured her essence” on film.
According to a 1997 interview with the Connecticut Post, Steve Novella and Perry DeAngelis investigated the Warrens for the New England Skeptical Society (NESS). They found the couple to be pleasant people, but their claims of demons and ghosts to be “at best, as tellers of meaningless ghost stories, and at worst, dangerous frauds.” They took the $13 tour and looked at all the evidence the Warrens had for spirits and ghosts. They watched the videos and looked at the best evidence the Warrens had. Their conclusion was that “It’s all blarney.” They found common errors with flash photography and nothing evil in the artifacts the Warrens had collected. “They have… a ton of fish stories about evidence that got away… They’re not doing good scientific investigation; they have a predetermined conclusion which they adhere to, literally and religiously,” according to Novella. Lorraine Warren said that the problem with Perry and Steve is that “they don’t base anything on a God”. Novella responded, “It takes work to do solid, critical thinking, to actually employ your intellectual faculties and come to a conclusion that actually reflects reality … That’s what scientists do every day, and that’s what skeptics advocate”.
In an article for The Sydney Morning Herald that examined whether supernatural films are really based on true events, that investigation was used as evidence to the contrary. As Novella is quoted, “They [the Warrens] claim to have scientific evidence which does indeed prove the existence of ghosts, which sounds like a testable claim into which we can sink our investigative teeth. What we found was a very nice couple, some genuinely sincere people, but absolutely no compelling evidence…” While it was made clear that neither DeAngelis nor Novella thought the Warrens would intentionally cause harm to anyone, they did caution that claims like the Warrens’ served to reinforce delusions and confuse the public about legitimate scientific methodology.
Do I believe it happened the way they say it did? No. Do I enjoy the movies despite that? Absolutely!
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